Page 36 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
“So vet him! He’s standin’ right here!”
Jonah rubbed the back of his head. “Uh, Grace—”
“He can mend fences. He can haul feed. He can do anything your brothers can do and probably with less complainin’ than Thomas.”
“Hey now.” Thomas straightened up on the porch. “I’mright here.”
“Grace.” Logan held up one hand. “I saidno.”
She crossed her arms. “Well, I say yes.”
“That isnotyour call to make.”
She stared at him.
The air between them changed. The texture of it. Like something smooth had gone rough under his palm, the way a planed board scratched when you ran your hand against the grain instead of with it.
“Excuse me?”
“Your arrangement here covers the house, the cookin’, and the mendin’.” Logan clenched his jaw. “It don’t extend to hirin’ decisions, and it sure don’t cover invitin’ people to live on this ranch without consultin’ me first.”
“I’m consultin’ youright now!”
“No, you’retellin’me. There’s a difference, and I don’t appreciate it.”
“Because you won’t even give him a chance! You tackled the man before he got a word out!”
“He stood on my porch before dawn! What’d you expect me to do, offer himlemonade?”
“I expected you to act like a reasonable human being before punchin’ someone in the face!”
Jonah had taken a step back during all this, which showed more of a self-preservation instinct than Logan would’ve credited him with based on that right hook. On the porch, Pa had settled into his chair with the rifle across his lap, observing the proceedings the way a man observes a thunderstorm from a covered porch.
Nothing to do but wait for it to pass.
Smart man.
“Get off my property.” Logan looked past Grace to Jonah. “Come back when you’ve sent word ahead, and I’ve had time to think on it.”
“You can’t just—”
“It’smyranch, Grace. My land, my house, my stock, my decision. That’s how this works.”
The words came out the way he’d built them. The way a man built a fence to keep things on the proper side. And the logic heldbecause this ranch ran on his authority. If he let that crack—if he let people show up and plant themselves wherever they pleased just because his wife vouched for them—the whole structure wobbled.
Grace pulled back as if he’d swung at her.
“Your ranch.”
“That’s right.”
“And what about me? Where do I fit into all themyours?”
“You fit where we agreed you’d fit.”
“Tell me somethin’, Logan.” She got in his face, and the morning light caught the copper in those freckles of hers, and her jaw set. “If Mason or Thomas showed up hungry on somebody’s doorstep, and the man of the house threw ’em out on their ear without even hearin’ ’em speak, what would you do?”
The question drilled right into the one spot he couldn’t armor up.
